Sinners review: Ryan Coogler strikes a bargain with the devil in blues horror

As with all legends and folklore, there is dispute over the origins. Did blues great Robert Johnson really sell his soul to the devil in a Faustian bargain to master his art?

Probably not. But it makes for a great story. Whether you believe it or not, or if you think it actually originated with a different Delta blues legend, Tommy Johnson, no relation, doesn’t matter as much as the mystique it creates.

So it was born, the association of blues music with the devil. How else to explain the almost supernatural gifts of these musicians, the way they sang their songs, played their instruments, moved to the rhythms and the feverish energy they inspired with their records and in juke joints across the American south?

Filmmaker Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther) has family roots in that era, and potent memories of his uncle reminiscing about his life in Mississippi, but only if he was drinking Old Taylor’s whisky and listening to the blues.

Marrying that slice of American history with his love of horror films in his latest movie, Sinners, makes perfect sense, especially when those legends are already infused with the otherworldly.

Coogler has said that as a genre, horror feels ancient, and even posited that the first tale told around a fire was probably a horror story.

Sinners sits at the crossroads of all those ideas and while it’s bursting at the seams, it’s also a visceral experience with an undeniable magnetism. There is a shifting energy that courses through it that feels fresh and exciting.

Set in the early 1930s, Sinners features frequent Coogler collaborator Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as twins Smoke and Stack, returning home to Mississippi after years in Chicago. Flush with cash, booze and snazzy threads from illicit activities, the twins buy an old millhouse from an old white man who is most certainly part of the Klan.

They plan to open a juke joint and they’re going to do it that very night. With the help of their community including Smoke’s old flame Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and the Chows (Li Jun Li and Yao), the place opens and it’s hopping.

Their young cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) wants to be a blues musician but his father, a pastor, wants him to stay within the church. When Sammie takes to the stage at the juke joint, his talent is so prodigious, it’s as if he’s connected to a primal power.

In an elaborate and heady sequence, the room pulses with heat as a mass of bodies move with so much fervour it’s like they’re all being controlled by an unknowable force.

That energy attracts a different kind of spirit, a malevolent one. This is where the horror elements kick in as an ancient vampire named Remmick (Jack O’Connell) senses Sammie’s power and attacks the juke joint.

Coogler reassembled his Black Panther team including Oscar winners costume designer Ruth E. Carter, production designer Hannah Beachler, composer Ludwig Goransson, and Wakanda: Forever cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw.

As a team, they’ve crafted an immersive, textured world, one that looks amazing, feels real but also sits outside of time and reality. It really helps with Sinners’ ambitions to be a transportive experience.

There are some wonderful performances, particularly from newcomer Caton, who before this was singing back-up for H.E.R., and from Mosaku, whose Annie has a necessary grounded energy.

The action and gore are also effective, but never so terrifying that the horror-averse would faint. Of course, the way it incorporates music, which also includes a rendition of Irish folk song “Rocky Road to Dublin”, is what really makes Sinners hum.

Do all the narrative and thematic threads come together? No. Sinners almost works better in parts than as a whole. But it’s always enthralling, as if you too is trapped in a spell, as if you’ve struck a bargain with the devil.

Rating: 3.5/5

Sinners is in cinemas on April 17